Mike Davis Discusses Dubai

"Home (supposedly) to a quarter of the world's building cranes and to (definitely) its richest and most flamboyant global elite, Dubai is also racked by labor problems.

The New York Times claims that the emirate is in the midst of reform, but Davis is far less sanguine. He sees a world consumed by 'a nightmarish and kind of apocalyptic presentism' that won't mend its ways any time soon."

"[W]hat Dubai has pioneered, and it's quite extraordinary, are modular legal and cultural superstructures. In other words a big part of Dubai's incredibly ambitious development plan are the creation of these specialized cities - science cities, internet cities, chess cities and so on. And each city is fitted with laws and regulations on whatever permissiveness is required for their activities but they're like bubble-tops. They stop at the edge of the city. So for instance internet in the city as a whole is subject some censorship, but not in Internet City," says Davis.

Thanks to Matt Sledge